Happy Holidays, Democrats!

Swing voters are turning to the Democrats in very large numbers, according to the NPR poll. Independents vote Democratic by 17 points – double the margin for the electorate as a whole. It is hard to imagine how one overcomes that big a swing to the Democrats, particularly if Democrats are also doing better in the world of base politics.

The Democrats dominate almost every issue presented in this survey. By 17 points, voters think they will do a better job on handling the economy and jobs, reflecting the broad range of concerns, including health care costs, living standards, and jobs outsourcing, that have not been blurred by changes in gas prices. But Democrats are also ahead on which party voters trust on “government spending,” suggesting the scope of the problem facing the Republicans on budget issues and national priorities. The Republicans are ahead only on “the war on terrorism,” but only by 9 points – far short of the heady days when Republicans had a 23-point lead.
But there are a few caveats…

…The indictments and investigations, stretching from both houses of Congress to the White House, from Washington to California, have hardly penetrated the public consciousness. For now, voters in the NPR survey see this as a problem of both parties, business as usual in Washington. When asked which party is more responsible for the corruption in Washington, 65 percent of voters say both parties are equally responsible…

This should be an important warning flag to Democrats running for office around the country. For sure, people think there is a special-interest mess in Washington… But Democrats will not get heard unless they are reformers – differentiated from the special-interest cesspool in Washington and prepared to advocate real change.
In other words: The Democratic Party needs to act as an opposition/reformist party instead of a “Lite” version of the GOP.